


the Little Things

by insomniacjams



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insomniacjams/pseuds/insomniacjams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...Cam really doesn't know what to do, because not only is Eric dressed like a three-year-old, he's talking like one too..."</p><p>In which Eric is sick, and Cam takes care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the Little Things

**Author's Note:**

> Here's some Eric/Cam fluff because of all the stupid feels from Cam's injury and Marc's puck-eye that's got me avoiding hockey news for the rest of the night, since I don't want to see that video again until it's accompanied with news.
> 
> Unbeta'd because I don't know anybody who reads this stuff, so please let me know if there's anything I need to fix! I can't for the life of me settle on a title for this.
> 
> Thanks for reading.

When Eric answers the door, Cam has to choke back a laugh that bubbles up from his chest; an affectionate laugh, he reminds himself as he takes in his captain's appearance. Eric's blonde hair is sticking out in six different directions, which isn't too far from the usual. However, he's only wearing one sock, his Bauer t-shirt is stretched backward over his broad chest, and apparently he's forgotten how to zip and button his pants.

With his lip stuck out in a dangerously petulant pout, he looks like an overgrown three year old insisting to his mother that he does indeed know how to put his shoes on the right feet. Cam raises an eyebrow from where he leans against the doorframe, and says, "Are you going to let me in?" It takes a few seconds for this to process in the clouded brown eyes that don't quite focus.

"Right," Eric mumbles, stumbling aside before Cam has to push past him into the house. Cam can't help it; he does let out a laugh as Eric nearly trips over his own feet and has to catch himself on the wall. Cam leans over to take off his shoes as Eric rights himself, and then asks, "What are you doing here?" His voice is rough and grates across Cam's expectations like sandpaper. 

"You sound like you tried to deep throat a ferret and failed," he says, looking up. He isn't a small guy, but he still isn't quite as tall as Eric, so when Eric isn't actively looking down to catch his eye, Cam instead gets a nice view of the scruff coming up on his chin, and a pale expanse of exposed neck. "C'mon," he sighs, taking Eric's arm and leading him down the familiar, sparsely decorated hallway, and to the master bedroom. "You need to lie down, you look like you sound."

"How do I look like I've been trying to-?"

"Don't finish that sentence," Cam says, because he's tired too. He'd just played every game on the road trip, and one night of awkward tossing and turning did not magically make up for a week worth of stained hotel sheets and cramped legs on the bus. 

"I can take care of myself," Eric tries to sound insistent, but it comes out as a low whine, and Cam really doesn't know what to do, because not only is Eric dressed like a three-year-old, he's talking like one too, and it's piquing Cam's interest in all the wrong ways. Rather than paying attention to the area below his waist that wakes up every time Eric gives him that wide-eyed, childlike stare, he busies himself rolling his eyes and putting his hands on his hips, doing his best to imitate his mother's most threatening stance.

"Sure you can, Staal. I come in here and you've failed at putting on enough clothing to look presentable, and you can't walk down the hall without falling sideways." When Eric doesn't say anything in response, Cam rolls his eyes for a second time in two minutes. "You also probably have a fever. You're looking pretty delirious there." Eric decides Cam doesn't warrant an argument, or perhaps his throat is too sore, so he just crosses his arms over his chest and continues to pout.

Cam rolls his eyes again, and leaves Eric sitting on his bed, glaring at the back of his head. He walks into the kitchen, moving quickly to fill a mug with water, mixing in some honey and lemon, and grabbing the cold medication from the counter when he hears Eric coughing up his lungs from upstairs. "Didn't bring me chicken soup?" Eric tries to laugh, but falls into another coughing fit again when Cam re-enters the room.

"Do I look like I carry chicken soup around in my ass? We've been out of state for over a week; groceries to make fresh chicken soup for your stubborn backside aren’t number one on my to-do list. Hell, I didn't even know you were sick until you opened the door this morning."

"Okay, I get it." Eric groans, letting out a pitiful noise, and falling backward across his bed. 

"You should probably stop talking, and drink some of that," Cam says, pointing at the mug he'd brought upstairs. Eric picks it up cautiously and sniffs it. "Either you've lost so many brain cells you'd think I'd actually try to poison you while you're sick, or you're enough of the dumb jock stereotype to think having a cold heightens your sense of smell."

"You sound like your mom," Eric croaks out, but he smiles anyway, taking a sip of the hot liquid, and then returning it to the nightstand with a grimace. Cam does a private victory dance in his head complete with ass shaking and high kicks. "I’m fucking sore," Eric’s broken voice interrupts his mental celebration.

"You got hit pretty hard yesterday."

"Did I?"

"You were muttering about daisies after. We thought you were concussed. Now I know you were probably just feverish and hiding it from everyone. Anyway, I thought I told you to stop talking." Cam grabs the hem of Eric's backwards shirt, and tugs upward. He takes it up to Eric's armpits before his muddled mind gets with the program and he raises his arms so that Cam can pull it off all the way. Cam grabs the sock next, noting that the other one is nowhere in sight. He doesn't want to know what happened to it. "I hope you can take off your own pants," Cam says.

Eric opens his mouth, but upon reconsideration, closes it again, and tries to take off his jeans by flopping around on his bed like an angry chihuahua trying to fight its way from inside a sweater. Cam sighs after a moment of watching Eric flap around on the bed, and grabs his pants that had somehow made it as far down as his knees. After undressing Eric, it's fairly easy to convince him he actually needs to be under the covers and not on top of them. 

"Here, you should probably take these," Cam tells him, pressing the cold medicine into Eric's hand once he's situated and seated upright with the mug of water/lemon/honey mixture in his hand. Eric takes them obediently after opening his mouth a few times to argue, and Cam slaps his hand over his face, aiming for his mouth, with a knowing look. 

After Eric drains the mug, he stretches out, cat-like, with his stomach down and ass in the air. It looks so ridiculous that Cam doesn't even bat an eye... It's just, well, it's Eric. Cam feels like he spends half his time with Eric trying not to laugh at him, especially with how seriously some of the kids on the team take him and his captaincy. "Go to sleep, asshole." He pauses to watch Eric roll around a few times, like a domesticated animal still has the habit of circling their spot a few times before lying down.

Just after Cam says a quiet good night, or morning, depending on how one might view time, he turns off the lamp on Eric's nightstand and tries to leave. He's not expecting Eric's hand as it shoots out from under the blankets, and tangles itself into the side of Cam's t-shirt. He knows that hand; it's Eric's way of asking him if he'd stay. He turns around, and he can see Eric's lips moving, but there's no sound coming out- he's not sure if it's because Eric knows that Cam can understand him, or that he's genuinely lost his voice.

Either way, Cam lets out a strangled noise, and says, "I can't." Eric frowns. His brow furrows together, his eyebrows so fair Cam probably wouldn't have been able to make them out in the dark had he not been so familiar with the face attached to them. "What happens if I get sick?"

"That's not what you're worried about." Cam cringes, partially at how transparent he can be to Eric, but mostly because Eric sounds worse than he did half an hour ago when he opened the door. Never mind deep throating an angry ferret, he sounds like swallowed a herd of stallions for dinner and they're having a convention full of animated arguments inside him. On second thought, Cam probably needs the sleep as much as Eric.

"Fine, but only if you stop talking, and before you say it, no- you are not allowed to find other ways to occupy your mouth." Eric lets out a silent laugh that shakes his whole body until he starts coughing again, and Cam takes a brief second to reevaluate his morals before Eric's firm hand hauls him over to the bed by the waist, and damn, a man that sick should not still be that strong.

"If I get sick, I'm blaming you," Cam says, but he burrows deep into the nest Eric's created on the dark blue sheets. He tries to wriggle into a more comfortable position, but fails terribly because he's pressed right up to Eric's front, and half a centimeter to the right of the edge of the bed. "Have I ever told you're an asshole?"

Eric's got the smirk across his face that Cam knows all too well. In the language of Eric's facial expressions, it's a surefire silent way of saying, "Every single goddamn day." So Cam knows he's lost one battle, and tries to sleep, thinking about recipes for homemade chicken soup he could test out when he wakes, and how he's actually fine with being squashed in his sleep by being held too tight, if Eric's the one doing the holding.

And maybe, sometime soon when Eric doesn’t sound quite so awful, Cam can get him to deep throat something that isn’t a ferret, and swallow something that isn’t a herd of stallions either.


End file.
